


MI6 Cafe Spectre Prompt Fest fills

by isthisrubble



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Ficlet Collection, M/M, MI6 Cafe SPECTRE Prompt Fest, prompt fills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-04-09 19:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4361066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isthisrubble/pseuds/isthisrubble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over at <a href="http://mi6-cafe.livejournal.com/">the MI6 Cafe</a> on livejournal they're running a prompt fest in the lead-up to <i>Spectre</i>, and I'm crossposting my fills here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. love doesn't solve everything

Not for the first time this week, Q wakes up alone.

It’s maybe 3 am, and he doesn’t have to turn on the light or get up to know what woke him. He can smell cigarette smoke.

James must have had a bad night. This happens at least once a week, and Q is used to it by now - James has been a Double O for nearly a decade, and you don’t last that long without seeing things you’d rather forget. Those are always the things that come back to haunt you.

If he goes out into the living room now, James won’t talk to him, won’t acknowledge him at all. It’s best not to push. Q learnt this the hard way - the only thing worse than the glass that nearly took his head off was the look on James’s face when he realised what he’d done.

Once upon a time Q might have thought his presence would help, but he knows now that no matter what he does, he can’t chase away James’s ghosts. All he can do is make James’s coffee in the morning, curl his fingers around his shoulder a little longer, press a kiss into the grey-blond hair and hope that the next night is better.


	2. exploding objects

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this art](http://eliosu.tumblr.com/post/114677953954/guys-im-so-into-james-bond-right-now-especially)

‘You’re  _joking_.’

‘Do I ever joke about my work, Bond?’

‘… you’re sending me to Belarus with an  _exploding dildo_.’

‘No one is going to suspect it, though, are they?’

‘Are you still pissed about what happened in Kiev? Because -’

‘That was your  _third_  Walther in as many missions. You promised me you’d bring that one back in one piece, and it ended up in the bottom of the Dnieper. Do you have any idea how fiddly those are to engineer?’

‘… I’m leaving now. Planes to catch, army generals to assassinate…’

‘If you bring that back in one piece, I will be very disappointed, 007.’

‘… Fine, I’ll blow up the dick.’


	3. broken

He can’t bring himself to throw the damn thing away.

It sits on the coffee table in the middle of his living room and stares at him as he comes and goes, to and from headquarters, in and out of the country. It has the same penetrating stare of its previous owner, and no matter where he puts it, he feels the weight of the bloody thing’s gaze.

The worst part about it is how obvious the repair job is. He wonders sometimes how M found the time to mend it herself - with everything that was happening at the time, he can’t imagine she would have had time, but he can’t imagine her letting anyone else do it, either. Why the cracks bother him, he can’t quite put his finger on, but it makes him uncomfortable.

Trust Q to work it out.

On his third night in the flat he looks between Bond and the bulldog and says, ‘why do you keep it around if you hate it so much?’

Bond puts the wine glasses down carefully before answering. ‘I never said I hated it.’

‘Eve said she thought it was some sort of inside joke, but you keep looking at it like it’s going to bite you.’

Bond looks at the little china figure and tries to think of something to say that won’t make Q think he’s nuts. ‘Do you ever get the feeling she’s judging you from beyond the grave?’

Q hmms at him. ‘I got the feeling she liked me. But I didn’t have much to do with her. Tanner was the one who supervised the transition after Boothroyd died. So no. Are you saying the dog’s possessed by her ghost?’

They shouldn’t be talking about this. It’s their first night together that could be called an actual date, they should be drinking wine, talking about something light, making each other laugh.

So of course, the most logical thing for him to say next is ‘I wish she hadn’t put it back together again.’

Q looks at him. Looks at the bulldog. Looks back at Bond. ‘Why? It’s intact. It still serves its purpose. It’s not missing a piece.’

‘Sentiment.’ The words taste bitter in his mouth. ‘If something breaks, you get rid of it. Move on. Replace it with a better version. You don’t try and patch it up.’

‘What do you think she did for you, then?’

He turns his head so fast that something in his neck twinges violently in protest. ‘What?’

Q’s brows knit together. ‘When you came back from the dead. I mean, she didn’t physically put you back together, you did that, but…’

‘Are you telling me this is some sort of metaphor?’

Q smirks and slipped around the kitchen island. ‘All I’m saying is, the dog was broken, got mended, and can still serve it’s purpose admirably. Your story is remarkably similar.’ His hands find Bond’s hips, and he raises an eyebrow. ‘Now, I know you’re not fond of introspection, so why don’t we change the subject here…’

The bulldog stays.


	4. health and safety

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... I'm so sorry what the hell is this even

Bond’s been back from Russia for a week and Q hasn’t been to see him. Eve scans her ID in the corridor outside Q Branch and wonders. She knows that Bond went off comms on his last mission, but that’s nothing new. And Q always visits him in medical.

Q and R are working at the main desk at the front of the room, the rest of the branch humming around them. Q is on one of his laptops, and he’s pressing the keys with perhaps a bit more force than is necessary. Eve knows the signs: something is pissing him off, and he’s just dying to let off some steam.

She’s not expecting R to gesture wildly at her to  _shut up_  when she asks Q, ‘have you been to see Bond yet? Tanner says he’s been asking for you.’

Q hits enter far too hard. ‘I will not be visiting 007 in medical,’ he says icily, and R draws a finger violently across her throat behind his back. Eve’s missing something here. See what happens when M spends a fortnight arguing with the CIA.

‘What -’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Yes you do.’ Eve reaches out and half closes the laptop, far enough to obscure the screen but not far enough to shut down whatever Q is working on. ‘You’re clearly dying to talk about it, whatever  _it_  is. So are you going to tell me, or do I have to snoop?’

Behind Q, R throws up her hands and walks away, leaving them alone. Q removes Eve’s hand from his screen and keeps typing. ‘007 refused to follow orders in Russia.’

‘He’s done -’

‘Yes, but this time he did it his way and  _got himself blown up_. And I am. So. Sick. Of. Wasting. My. Time. With.  _Him!_ ’ Q pounds the keyboard with each word and then slammed the lid shut. His hands are shaking.

‘Q…’

‘I can’t keep doing this.’ Q sounds so bitter, so exhausted. ‘I can’t be close to him and watch him do this all the time. I can’t have him in my flat all the fucking time if he’s going to pull these stupid stunts…’

Neither of them say anything for a minute or two. Q slowly gets himself under control. Eve thinks about the news M had passed on to her this morning, the news she’d come down to Q Branch to pass on to Q.

She knows that Bond and Q have been dancing around their relationship the entire time they’ve been together, have been trying to pretend they mean less to each other than they do. Eve’s seen Q in love once before, though, years ago, and she knows the signs. And the way Bond looks at him isn’t really that subtle, if you’re looking for it.

So she waits until Q has calmed down before she says, ‘they’re retiring him. Taking away his number.’

Q goes very still.

She realises then that Q really has been avoiding everything to do with the results of Bond’s mission. Maybe he’s too scared of what he’ll read, of how upset it will make him. So he doesn’t know.

‘Q, I think we’d better finish this conversation in your office.’

He follows her into the other room like a ghost.

As soon as the door closes he grabs her arm, all the emotion he’s not letting show on his face coming out in how tight his grip is. ‘What’s happened to him? Stephens said - he wasn’t -’

Eve wishes she could use Q’s real name. ‘Sweetheart, his back’s broken.’

‘… oh my god.’

He’s gone completely still, and Eve hugs him because she doesn’t know what else to do. She’s always been a fixer, but she can’t fix this.

Q’s crying, shaking, but then he takes a deep, long breath. ‘I think… I think I’d better go down to medical.’


	5. possession

‘.. what’s all this?’

James looked up, saw what Q had found, and utterly failed to look innocent.

‘… a shoebox.’

‘Yes, James, I can see that.’ Q pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘What’s all this in it?’

‘Do you need to get your eyes checked again?’

‘You’re going to keep being difficult, aren’t you? I can see what’s in it,  _why_  is it all in a shoebox?’

Q tipped the box onto the bed: Bond’s second palm-print Walther; a piece of garrote wire coiled inside a pound coin; a pen with poison ink; a pair of night vision glasses, and a custom multitool/pocket-knife. All supposedly lost after a mission or two.

Supposedly.

James, the wanker, was still pretending to read his book. Q resisted the urge to smack him across the back of the head with it. ‘You told me you’d lost all this stuff.’

For a moment Q thought he was being ignored, but just as he was sliding from exasperation to anger James put the book aside and crawled over to Q, kneeling up on the bed so that their eyes were level. Q tried very hard not to look at his face, because he could never resist those eyes.

‘Hey.’ James touched his jaw, and reluctantly Q turned his head. ‘I like the stuff you make me. Isn’t that a good thing?’

‘You let me think you’d lost them all!’

James at least had the decency to look a little ashamed. ‘If I’d brought them back, you would have taken them off me anyway. I didn’t think it bothered you so much.’

‘I thought you were just bloody irresponsible.’

‘Well,’ James smiled a little self depreciatingly. ‘You’re not wrong there, you know. But I try my best.’


	6. never say never

‘I am never doing this again.’

‘We haven’t even got -’

‘Shut up.’

‘Q, you’re  _crushing my hand_.’

‘Shut  _up_.’

‘Hey.  _Hey_. Talk to me. Distract yourself.’

‘Distract  _myself?_  Isn’t that your job?’

‘My method of distraction isn’t appropriate for family viewing, and there’s a -’

‘Oh god, are you ever  _not_  thinking about sex?’

‘It’s always worked out well for you before, though, hasn’t it?’

‘Oh my god,  _stop_.’

‘I thought you wanted me to distract you - oh look, they’re boarding now, come on.’

‘I hate you.’

‘You really don’t.’


	7. make me disappear

Everyone who knew Bond knew this would happen eventually. M hadn’t said anything to Q about it, and neither had Eve or Tanner - maybe they’d just accepted that there was nothing they could do to stop it.

So on the night Bond turns 45 and has his licence to kill revoked, Q isn’t that surprised to find an uninvited guest in his flat when he gets home.

‘Q,’ Bond says, ‘I need to ask you a favour.’

Q takes a deep breath: ‘what sort of favour?’

Of course, he already knows. James Bond is not the sort of man to take up a desk job or retire quietly.

You can take the licence to kill away from James Bond, but he will always be 007, and 007 would rather die than stop working.

‘You know what I’m talking about.’

The silence stretches out. It’s full to the brim with everything they never got around to saying, the tension they never broke.

And then Q says, ‘what do you need?’


	8. No

Q would give almost anything to get Bond out of his bloody office.

_Almost_  anything.

‘… and what’s wrong with the exploding pen, anyway? It saved my life in –’

Q slams down the folder he’s carrying. ‘I am  _not_  giving you explosives that anyone can detonate accidentally. Ask me about it again and I’ll send you off with a water pistol next time.’

* * *

This time, Bond looks like he can’t decide whether to be angry or not.

‘Q, what the hell is this?’

‘It’s a request form for vehicle modification.’ Maybe if Q acts bored enough, Bond won’t try and turn this into a fight. ‘It’s been filled in, if you need something you should get a new one -’

‘ _I_  filled it in.  _You_  rejected it. Why, exactly?’ He brandishes the paper again, as if Q didn’t see it the first time.

‘Because it’s completely unnecessary for your personal car to have missiles and ejector seats and whatever else you seem to think you need.’

‘The old Q was more than –’

‘And I’m not him.’ Q snatches the form from Bond’s hand, folds it as small as he can and tucks it into Bond’s breast pocket. ‘If you want a modified car, stop insisting on using your own on your missions. I’ll not inflict you on London or the M1 with a weaponised car.’

* * *

‘Poison pen?’

‘… I said no to the exploding pen, what do you to expect me to say to that?’

* * *

‘Flame thrower?’

_‘No.’_

* * *

‘Cigarette gun?’

_‘What movies have you been watching?’_

* * *

The thing is… the watch actually makes sense.

Bond submits the request on paper directly to Q, with a satisfied smirk that makes Q want to burn the pages without even reading them. Unfortunately Bond would probably just keep filling in forms.

The version Bond proposes includes a wire garrotte, multiple GPS functions, a needle coated in a dose of something to knock someone out, and a radio transmitter. This particular suggestion comes with the note “just in case I lose my earpiece again.” Bond also notes that a watch with a metal band can be used as an improvised knuckleduster.

It’s all perfectly sensible and achievable.

Q senses a trap.

Bond never loses or destroys the watch, and Q is vaguely offended. Bond always loses the things  _he_  designs.


	9. the past has come back to haunt me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *rewatches skyfall*  
> me: oops

He stopped believing in a lot of things when he was eleven. God. Ghosts. That his parents were invincible.

Happy endings.

Life hasn’t exactly encouraged him to start believing in them again.

* * *

 

The fucking house looks exactly the same.

He hasn’t been back here since he was eighteen, but it’s still in his bones: he could still find and avoid every squeaking floorboard, blindfolded.

They say public school prepares you for prison. This fucking place was better preparation than Eton ever was. He would know, he’s been in all three places.

* * *

 

When he was eight, for about three months he had the same recurring nightmare: he was trapped in the house, and it was burning.

It was because of Hollowhead, the nearest other estate in the area. It burnt down one night, the glow and smoke visible from miles away.

He never thought that particular dream would come true.

* * *

 

The first time he fell through the ice, he was five, and his mother forbad him from ever setting foot on it again.

That didn’t last through the next winter. He liked the risk too much, even then, and Da didn’t exactly discourage him.

Maman got used to it eventually.

He only fell through once more, when he was ten and hadn’t realised that he weighed more than he had a year ago, and stepped on a thinner piece that might have held him before.

It’s even more freezing than he remembers.

* * *

 

The chapel smells like death. It’s five hundred years old. It wouldn’t be the first time.


	10. suit up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't actually start writing this for the prompt - I promised spectralarchers (skyfallat221b here) a James-Bond-is-Barney-Barton fic way back in 2014 for Christmas, and I finally got it to work for New Years 2016. It’s therefore only vaguely related to the prompt, I mean, it’s a line from The Avengers, what did you expect me to do? Also, of course, this makes no sense with half of the canon for either franchise.

The envelope had arrived the week before Thanksgiving, while he and the team were in Seattle, but Laura had saved it for when Clint got home, so that he could be the one to open it.

There’s eight postcards this time - Munich, Istanbul, Rome, Cape Town, Saint Petersburg. The Istanbul one has a cocktail recipe on it, which Clint will have to pass on to Nat or Tony or someone who will actually appreciate that shit. The rest of them have amusing little stories or dirty jokes scribbled on them, which is better than one of the ones from last year, which had had only  _I killed ~~////~~  / people yesterday_ written on it. Clint hadn’t known what to make of that one.

This year Barney has picked out a postcard for each of the kids, too, and written them a little message - [The Dragons in Love](http://visit.guide-bulgaria.com/a/1316/statue_the_dragons_in_love.htm) for Lila, who has been convinced, somehow, that Thor will bring her a dragon for a pet next time he visits; [King’s Cross Railway Station](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/King's_Cross_Station,_interior_geograph-3851397-by-Ben-Brooksbank.jpg) for Cooper and his burgeoning Harry Potter obsession; and the [Lorraine Mondial Air Balloon Rally](https://www.yatzer.com/sites/default/files/article_images/1839/Lorraine_Mondial_Air_Balloon_Rally_in_France18.jpg) for Nate, not that he’ll appreciate it yet. Well. He does like brightly coloured things, so maybe it’s not entirely wasted.

It’s been a while since they spoke on the phone - after 2012 and the messes they both got themselves into, they’ve tried to keep closer in contact, but it doesn’t always work out, because Barney - James now - often disappears for weeks on assignments, and changes his mobile number regularly for security. Clint still owes him a beer from the last time they ran into each other, too.

* * *

The package arrives on the 28th of December. It’s addressed to Charlie Chaplin (oh, for Christ’s sake), and appears to have come from Spain, but it’s just a little too battered for that – it will have been through at least three intermediaries, as per usual.

It’s thicker than last year’s, and when he opens it Bond sees why – as well as the regular packet of photographs and the short letter, there’s a big hand-made Christmas card covered in glitter, because the kids have been given free reign this year, apparently. Shit, he’s going to be finding the stuff everywhere for the next month or so.

The card is… _colourful_. There are six little handprints in green paint, scribbled all over to look vaguely like Christmas trees. 

The handwriting inside is painfully neat, which means Cooper, and it reads:

 _Dear Uncle Barney_ (they really shouldn’t use his old name, but it’s a losing battle, because Clint will never get used to calling him James) _,_

_Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!_

_Lots of love,_

_Cooper,_ (in a little girl’s scrawl) _Lila,_ (in Laura’s neat cursive) _Nate, Clint, Natasha & Laura_

Clint’s letter is in code, and begins with a heartfelt apology for the glitter. Farm’s doing well, everyone says hello, etc etc. It sounds as if he’s finally found the right balance between avenging and spending time with his family. Bond will never be a family man, but he knows it makes Clint happy.


End file.
